Recent archival initiatives have made accessible significant bodies of media work by writers associated with the Black Arts Movement, including projects in film, radio, and television. These rediscoveries invite renewed attention to the movement’s engagement with broadcast and screen media and challenge the longstanding emphasis on poetry, theater, and print culture in scholarship on the period.

This panel asks: what happens when we place the Black Arts Movement in the broader media ecologies of the late twentieth century? How did Black Arts writers adapt their aesthetic and political commitments to formats such as public television, documentary film, radio programming, or educational media? What institutional, technological, or collaborative contexts enabled—or constrained—these projects? And what can these historical media initiatives teach us about building media practices today that resist oppression, amplify marginalized voices, and support emancipatory work in an era of digital surveillance, corporate control, and ongoing social inequities.

We invite papers that examine newly available archival materials as well as reconsider familiar figures through their work in media beyond print. Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• Film, television, radio, or digital work by Black Arts Movement and adjacent writers and media makers
• Archival discoveries and methodologies for studying media artifacts
• Public broadcasting and Black cultural production
• Adaptation of Black Arts aesthetics to audiovisual media
• Collaborations among writers, filmmakers, producers, and activists
• Media institutions, funding structures, and distribution networks
• The circulation and reception of Black Arts media projects
• Pedagogical or educational media initiatives
• The afterlives and contemporary relevance of Black Arts media experiments

Possible figures include Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Jayne Cortez, Carolyn Rodgers, Larry Neal, Ed Bullins, William Greaves, St. Clair Bourne, The Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron, Haile Gerima, Julie Dash, Charles Burnett, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, and Askia Touré among others.among others.

By foregrounding these media practices, the panel aims to expand our understanding of the Black Arts Movement as a multimedia and transmedial cultural formation.

Please submit a 200–300 word abstract and a brief bio (1–2 sentences) to amg737@nyu.edu. Graduate students, contingent faculty, and early-career scholars are encouraged to apply.

Deadline: March 25
Organizers: amg737@nyu.edu

Accepted presenters will be included in a Special Session panel proposal submitted to the Modern Language Association Convention to be held in Los Angeles, January 7–10, 2027.

Presenters must be MLA members by April 1, 2026